ewarnerusa wrote:
StirCrazy wrote:
...so your hot rod is rated for 12V and I didn't see a +/- range on the website. how much voltage were your solar panels sending to the heater?...
I have also wondered about the voltage at the diversion load. When I connect to the SCC via laptop, the software provides me a diversion load current measurement as well as a load voltage. The current value is consistent with what I expect based on the other meters I have (one on solar array output, another bi-directional one on primary battery connection). But the load voltage confuses me as it is fluctuating at levels well below 12V and I wonder if it is not what I think it is? I have not taken a multimeter to leads, although now I have some wire exposure to take a measurement from!
During my test run, the element wiring began to feel warm as soon as diversion current began to pass to it. And it began to "cook" when there was <10A of current. This seems like well below any scenario where there could be more than 300 watts of power. The panels' open circuit voltages are 22.4 and 24.3 (2 different types of panels), so it seems to me that there isn't a V*I scenario that exceeds 300 watts.
In diversion load configuration, the wiring is for the panels to be directly connected to the batteries rather than to the SCC. The SCC leads that were formerly array input become diversion load output. A diversion load configuration is applied and DIP switches must be changed on the SCC.
you need to do an Ohm measurement on the element its self. if it is a 300watt element at 12V that means it should be a 0.48 ish Ohm element. well, if you feed 17V into a 0.48 Ohm element you get 602 watts, but that doesn't explain your current. for giggles do a Ohm reading on just the element and see what it comes back as. maybe it is a defective element or mislabeled. I am assuming you never ran it dry for even a few seconds...
